The Future of Sony…PS4

The dust has cleared, the rage has been let out and now I am here to tell you what you missed yesterday with Sony’s “reveal” of the PS4 that took place last night in New York.

The Games

Let’s get this one out of the way because if you read this blog, this is the only thing you care about. Don’t front.

Sucker Punch showed a trailer for the next installment of the Infamous series titled Infamous: Second Son. Not much is known about the game except more people have powers, the government is watching/policing people and it seems like their is a war brewing. If you watch the trailer you can see that yesterday’s date is on the screen. WHAT DOES IT MEAN!? (kidding). That wasn’t the only series that’s playing same game, different world as Guerrilla Games showed off a demo in the newest entry in the Killzone series, Killzone: Shadow Fall. Square Enix promised (i.e. See The Last Guardian, Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy Verses) a game come this year at E3, Media Molecule is working on…something.

List of Developers and publishers who will be be making games for the PS4

But don’t worry, there were some new IP’s on hand as well. Ubisoft showed off more of it’s E3 darling, Watch Dogs; the people at Bungie showed off more of their new game Destiny while announcing that it will launch with exclusive content for the new system; Capcom is releasing Super Street Fighter IV Mega a new PS4 game called Deep Down with a new game engine to boot; Evolution Studios will be releasing car sex-sim sim called Drive Club and Studio Japan is working on a new game called Knack which could honestly pass as a kid’s movie.

That not so surprising biggest news came from Blizzard in which they formally announce that Diablo III will be coming to both PS3 and PS4.

The Hardware

Zilch, nothing. I can show you the controller (it comes with a touch pad! It’s like a move controller-lite!) but that will piss off people more. I do know that it runs Unreal Engine 4 like a boss.

The system interface

This is where I think Sony did some good and had me thinking toward the future of gaming as a whole (Microsoft, get your shit together, Nintendo REALLY get your shit together).

Lead System Architect Mark Cerny talked about the social features of the system and in making a Sony Ecosystem with both the Vita (remember that?) and the PS4. The PS4 will be able to stream video game play (via Ustream) to other people. Even if you don’t have the game you can watch some one play Watch Dogs or even take control of their game and help them out in something they are stuck in. You can also send video or screen shots to other social networks such as Facebook and…actually that’s it.

David Perry, CEO of streaming gaming service Gaikai also came out on stage to say that the PS4 will have instant streaming of video games. What that means is that you can play the game you are downloading while it’s downloading and even pay for it if you think it’s good. The Vita in that sense will also get some better Remote Play action with the PS4 becoming a “game server” and the Vita as the “client”.

While we are on the streaming talk, the PS4 will be able to stream bot PS1 and PS2 games. It won’t, however, won’t be backwards capatable with PS3 games. This is a good thing and bad thing: Good because the cost of the system won’t be as high but you pissed off a whole lot of people because they can’t play their PS3 games.

The new look reminds me a lot of Microsoft’s Windows Phone (take that as you will).

When is it coming out?

Well, they closed the show with a Holiday 2013 release window.

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I’m still not on board with the PS4 Hype train just yet. I see what Sony is doing and for the most part it’s pretty good but they could have at least showed off what the damn thing looked like. Hell, a tease would have been cool. What do you guys think about the PS4 announcement? Are you ready for this new hotness or are you going to wait till E3 to see if you are getting one? Sound off in the comments below.